The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

by Harold Frederic

  CHAPTER V.

  LAFE RESCUES AN OFFICER, AND FINDS HIS COUSIN.

  Lafe had seen forest fires near Juno Mills, and there was nothing inhis recollection of them to suggest great danger in this one. He wasmore interested for the moment in the young Ohio officer proppedagainst the stump. This lieutenant was barefooted. A thief hadevidently taken also his sash, sword, and belt.

  He was probably one of Red Pete's victims. The others could not be faraway, among them Lafe's problematical kinsman with the presentationwatch.

  But finding a possible uncle was just now of less importance thanfinding a safe way out of the thicket. The smoke grew visibly thicker,and Lafe could detect, off to the left, the distinct crackling noise offlames. He dropped on one knee again, and patted the officer's shoulderwith decision.

  The young man moved his head restlessly, then opened his eyes andstared dully at Lafe.

  "Which way is the creek?" the drummer-boy shouted.

  The lieutenant, as if dazed, looked half wonderingly into the boy'sface. Then he blinked, shook himself, and made a move to sit upright.He sank back with his mouth drawn awry by the severity of his pain, andforced the semblance of a laugh upon these pale lips.

  "I thought at first I was home, and you were my brother," he said.

  "How bad are you hurt? Can you walk?" Lafe demanded. "We've got to getout of this. The woods are on fire, and the wind is blowing it deadthis way. Where are you hit?"

  "Minie ball here--between the shoulder and the lung, I hope," repliedthe other, indicating his left side. "It's stiffened and I can't liftmyself. Help me on my feet, and I guess I can walk away."

  Lafe put an arm under him and gave him his hand. The lieutenant, with agroan, set his teeth and scrambled up on his feet. He looked about himfor an instant, and then hastily seated himself on the stump.

  "I'm dizzy for the minute," he murmured. "I must have lost so muchblood. It's afternoon, isn't it?"

  "Past five. You'd better brace up now, and try to come on. Which way isit?"

  The officer looked vaguely around. "I hardly know," he confessed. "Ican just remember dragging myself off into the swamp. I thought Ishould find some water, and I guess my strength gave out about here.Somebody came along and pulled off my boots and stockings, and wentthrough my pockets, but I was too near dead to resist, and I kept myeyes shut."

  "Well, you want to keep 'em open now. This must be the way out,according to the wind. That's it; get your arm over my shoulder, andwe'll make a break."

  They walked thus for a dozen steps or so, the officer leaning a littleon Lafe's right shoulder. Then the wounded man stopped.

  "I'd rather you went ahead," he called into the boy's ear. "Thebranches knock against my game side, this way. I'll keep behind you;"and so they went on again, Lafe pushing the saplings and boughs asidefor the other.

  The smoke had become almost blinding now, as it sifted through themotionless air of the thicket. The noises had risen now into apandemonium of uproar--on the left the furious bellowing of the tempestand the flames, to the right a series of outbursts that shook the earthlike mine explosions. It sometimes seemed to Lafe as if hedistinguished the cheers and vague cries of men, off on the otherside--and then back would come the chaotic din.

  Awed and deafened, the two pushed doggedly on, Lafe stealing glancesover his shoulder, to see if the officer was following. He came,holding to the branches with his right hand for support, and strivingto pick soft places for his bare feet among the stones and pricklyground vines.

  It had suddenly grown very hot. The heat began to sting Lafe's foreheadand eyes. They were advancing into the temperature of a veritablefurnace. The crackling noises to the left had swollen all at once to anangry tumult close at hand.

  Looking up with smarting eyes through the pungent smoke, the boy beheldscattered flashes of flame dotting the murky shadows of the forestbeyond, and even as he looked these tongues of fire ran forward underthe wind with darting swiftness. An imperative outcry behind Lafecalled a halt. He turned as his companion reeled, clutched wildly at anash sapling, and fell against it, his head hanging helplessly forwardon his breast.

  "It's no use," he gasped, as the boy strode back. "I'm choking, and I'mplayed out. I can't go another step."

  He falteringly lifted one of his torn and bleeding feet, and put itdown again. His arm slipped from around the sapling, and he would havefallen if Lafe had not caught him.

  "Why don't you be a man!" the boy screamed shrilly through the tumult.

  A sort of angry desperation seized upon Lafe. He would drag this Ohiotenderfoot out of the fire in spite of himself. With rough energy hefitted his shoulder under the officer's armpit, and drew his right armforward in the determined clutch of both his hands.

  "Come on now, the best way you can. Never mind your feet or yourshoulder either!" he yelled, and then, stiffening his back under theburden, he staggered forward.

  He could never afterward recall anything definitely of how he did it,or how long it took. But through the shrivelling heat, through themurderous swoop of fire and smoke, somehow he came. All at once therewas the play of cooler air upon his face. Instead of the choking smokeand darkness he was wrapped about by a clean wind. It had grownsuddenly daylight again.

  Bent almost double under his burden, he strove in vain to fill hislungs with this fresh air. It was dimly in his mind to straightenhimself, and breathe in all he could hold. But the load on his backseemed to be pressing him further down, and whirling him round as well.

  Then he was lying face downward, on dry, soft earth with the sharpedges of stiff marsh grass in his hair. Something heavy lay across him.He rolled himself free from the encumbrance, and stretched himself outluxuriously on his back. The wind soughed pleasantly through the reedsabout his head.

  He went to sleep, dreaming placidly as he dropped off that orderedswarms of men were passing through the tall grass close beside him,firing volleys and cheering as they fired.

  Four red points of light, at regular distances apart, and shiningfaintly against a broad canopy of blackness, was what Lafe, still lyingon his back, beheld when he woke. He looked at them lazily for whatseemed a long time, and did not care in the least what they signified.Then, quite without any effort, he knew that they were lanterns hung ona rope.

  There were sinuous lines of motion in the darkness above the lanterns,and these revealed themselves to him as the sides of canvas-stripsstirring in the wind. This, too, did not seem important, and heindolently closed his eyes again.

  A sharp cry, ringing abruptly out close at hand, awoke him morethoroughly. He even lifted his head a little, and saw many morelights--lanterns, kerosene lamps, and tallow-dips stuck in bottles.They stretched out irregularly in all directions, illumining littlepatches of space, which seemed all the smaller by comparison with thevast blocks of deep shadows surrounding them.

  The radiance of many of these lights centred upon a broad table, aboutwhich several men were standing in their shirtsleeves, and with apronslike butchers. There seemed to be another man lying on this table, andone of his legs was bared to the thigh. Some of these shadowy figuresmoved, and another cry arose. Lafe shut his eyes, and turned away fromthe spectacle.

  There was now a rustle of straw under him, and he noted that his headwas resting on a canvas pillow filled with straw. A strong smell, as ofarnica, attracted his attention. Now he understood that he was in ahospital tent.

  He wondered where he himself had been hurt. Except for a general, dullaching of the muscles, he was conscious of no special pain. He triedopening and closing his fingers, and moving his toes.

  Each member seemed in working order. He passed his hands along hissides, and still found nothing amiss. But his head certainly did ache.

  Vague recollection of the events of the day began to stir in hismemory, but not at all in their right order. It seemed as if it wasFoldeen Schell whom he had carried out of the burning woods, and nearerstill in point of time seemed to be Red Pete's stifling grip upon hisn
eck. Then, somehow, his thoughts drifted to the watch and itsinscription.

  He drowsily tried to think what this Lyman Hornbeck must be like--agray-bearded old man and a church-member, and yet only a lieutenant. Sohis vagrant fancy drifted about on the border-land of sleep.

  Suddenly there were voices close about him. Half opening his eyes, Lafeblinked at three or four torches which some soldiers were holding up atthe foot of his bed. A half-dozen officers were there as well, and theforemost one was General Boyce.

  The light hurt Lafe's eyes, and he closed them. The general's cheeryvoice remained in his ears, though, and conveyed so true a notion ofthe man that Lafe seemed to continue to behold him, the red torchlightheightening the glow of health on his round cheeks and shining in hisbrave, kindly eyes.

  "Oh, you'll be up and about in a day or two," the general was saying,in a hearty, encouraging way. "Won't he, surgeon-major?"

  "Well, inside a week," answered another voice. "The wound in itselfwasn't much. It's the loss of blood that's worst."

  "Lieutenant," the general went on, "if I don't call you captain whenyou get back from your furlough, it won't be my fault. You've beenmentioned in the despatches. Your company's tussle with the breastworkunder the hill was as plucky a thing as has been done to-day. Well,good luck to you!"

  There was a rattle of spurs and swords, as if the group were moving,and then Lafe was conscious that the young Ohio officer spoke, as iffrom the very next bed.

  "O general," he called out, "I'll save my own thanks for some othertime! But I want you to take notice of this boy here. _He's_ onewho ought to be mentioned in despatches. I'd have been roasted alive ifit hadn't been for him. He came into the woods and found me, and routedme up, and made me walk, and when I gave out he actually carried meright through the blaze. Talk about charging the breast-work! What hedid was worth fifty of it."

  Lafe felt through his closed eyelids that the torches were being heldso as to cover him with their light. Oddly enough, he seemed withoutdesire to look.

  "I won't forget," said the general. "How badly off is he?"

  "He was brought in with the lieutenant here," returned thesurgeon-major. "I didn't see him myself. You were here, nurse?"

  A woman's voice took up the thread: "Poor little fellow, he doesn'tseem to have been shot, but his head was laid open to the bone somehow.Doctor Alvord thought it must have been a horse's hoof."

  "We were both on the ground in the way when the big charge down the runwas made," explained the lieutenant. "He must have got trampled on. Ithink he's a drummer in the brigade band. I noticed him when we wentinto line this morning."

  "I wonder if it can be our Juno Mills boy," broke in the general. Lafefelt that the great man was bending over close to him. "Some Dutchmanin the band was telling a tremendous yarn about a youngster who wentdown alone into the breast-work after it was deserted, and had a fight,single-handed, with a baggage-thief, and played the deuce generally.Does anybody know whether he's the same one?"

  Lafe could never understand afterward what ailed him to behave so, butat this he kept his breathing down to its gentlest possible form. Thegeneral and his attendants moved off down the aisles, halting with thetorches at other bedsides to give cheer. Their going gave Lafe leisurefor the thought which interested him most.

  The news that his head had been laid open to the bone had fascinatedhim. He put up a hand now and felt of his skull. It was covered allover with interlaced strips of stiff plaster encased in a soft linenbandage drawn tight.

  "Are you feeling all right?"

  It was the voice of the lieutenant. Lafe, proud of his plasters, openedhis eyes and made out the young officer, propped up with a couple ofstraw pillows on the bed next his.

  "My head aches a little, that's all," said Lafe. "Say, we had a squeakfor it, didn't we?"

  "I shan't forget it--nor you," responded the other.

  "Cleveland's in Ohio, ain't it?" the boy asked, all at once pursuing asubject which had kept dodging in and out of his mind. "Perhaps youknow an old man in one of the Ohio regiments--he must be getting alongtoward sixty--he's a lieutenant, and his name's Lyman Hornbeck. I waslooking for him this afternoon when--when I lighted on you."

  The young officer, quite heedless of his bandages, sat bolt upright andstared at Lafe as if too much amazed for words.

  "I don't know what you're driving at," he said at last. "_My_ nameis Lyman Hornbeck, and I'm a Cleveland man and a lieutenant--but I'm along way off from sixty. You can't mean my father? He's been dead twoyears. His name was Lyman. Why, hold on! General Boyce said somethingabout Juno Mills--my father came from near there--you don't mean to sayyou're a Hornbeck?"

  An irresistible impulse moved Lafe to crawl out of his bed and totteracross to the other's pallet. He sat down on the edge of it, and leanedhis head back on the officer's two pillows.

  "Say, I'm Steve Hornbeck's son," he said, "and your father was my UncleLyme. Do you know, I kind of felt like takin' a shine to you when youspoke to me early this morning."

  "I'M STEVE HORNBECK'S SON!"]

  The officer had put his arm affectionately round the boy's neck. "Why,don't you remember," he cried, with pleased interest, "how I said I hada brother like you at home?"

  And so the two lay close together in a delighted gossip until thesurgeon came, and laughingly but peremptorily drove them apart. Theytold him something of the strange story, and an attendant went out andfound Foldeen, and brought him in, and he added many strikingvariations to the legend which now, by midnight, had become the talk ofthe brigade.

  General Boyce came back to the hospital tent purposely to see the boyfrom his own Dearborn County whom men were talking about. He nodded hishead approvingly as he stood by the bedside and listened to Foldeen'sexcited narrative of the lad's fight with Red Pete.

  "I remember hearing of that fellow before," he said. "We'll hang him inthe morning, if we have to go without breakfast to do it."

  Foldeen shook his head. "He is no good for hanging, dot Red Pete,"he explained. "When the fire is gone out by dot breastwork where hevas, maybe you find some chargoals from him--und maybe two, dreebuttons--dot's all."

  The beautiful city by the lake wore its most velvety, green robes ofJune when Lieutenant Hornbeck, who had been home invalided for someweeks, was able at last to accept the reception which the good peopleof St. Mark's Church wished to hold in his honor.

  It seemed as if all Cleveland sought for admission to this festival ofwelcome to the brave young officer. Yet when he came in, leaning on hiswife's arm, and with the flush of honest pride mantling upon the pallorof his face, it turned out that the real hero of the evening was thewiry, brown-faced boy he brought with him.

  Lafe's story had been told in many other places. They knew it by hearthere in his new home, where henceforth he was to live with his cousin.He blushed many times that evening at the things admiring people saidto his face about him, and he still says if folks _will_ insist ondiscussing it, that the only interesting thing of the whole day was histaking a shine to his cousin before he knew who he was.

  HOW DICKON CAME BY HIS NAME.

  A Tale of Christmas in the Olden Time.